Conquering the Wine Aisle

TO THE OUTSIDER, wine can be baffling—a subject of infinite complexities, intimidating rules, complicated chemistry and its own peculiar language. It is little wonder that the wine aisles of most major supermarkets and large wine retailers are filled with confused but thirsty-looking consumers.

Now and again I like to pop into large supermarkets, lurk in the wine aisles and just listen to conversations. More often than not, these involve a brief discussion of a few famous regions or brands (Chablis or Jacob's Creek for example) before one of the shoppers spots a wine they have tasted before and says, "Ooh, I enjoyed this the other night. Let's go for that."

Outside the rarefied world of wine tastings, small specialist wine shops and the fine-wine market the message is clear: the average consumer just wants wine made simpler. I put this to Dan Jago, who, as group wine director at supermarket giant Tesco PLC, is one of the largest wine sellers in the world. Mr. Jago is responsible for the sale of more than 400 million bottles of wine a year in markets that stretch from the U.K and Ireland to Eastern Europe, Turkey, China and South Korea.

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This is wine retailing on an industrial scale. Forget images of your local wine merchant visiting a vineyard and then ordering a van of cases to be driven to his shop. At Tesco, a quarter of its wine leaves the vineyard in a "flexitank"—a 6-meter sterilized bag which, when filled up with a hose, contains 24,000 liters of wine. This is then put on a container ship to England, where it is emptied and bottled. From vineyard to shop, the process takes about six weeks.

By far Mr. Jago's biggest sellers are generic Australian red and white wines, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio, an inoffensive white that Tesco sells more than 27 million bottles of a year. To underline the divide between the wine professionals and the average consumer, Pinot Grigio is also a wine critics love to hate. They accuse it of tasting of nothing.

"The thing about wine is that it has a very low security factor with consumers," Mr. Jago says. "They are not comfortable about wine. Wine is intimidating, wine is deliberately scary. We as an industry spend far too much time making it look complicated rather than look easy. We are fantastically snobbish about the whole thing. We spend so much time trying to make wine look inaccessible because it is an exclusive club. That is good for those who want to be part of that club but for those who didn't want to join the club in the first place that's not really a good thing."

‘Wine is intimidating, wine is deliberately scary. We as an industry spend far too much time making it look complicated rather than look easy. We are fantastically snobbish about the
whole thing.’

His views are supported by fellow U.K. supermarket chain Morrisons, whose 2,000-strong survey of British wine drinkers found that, when it comes to buying wine, 74% said they weren't confident. In response, Morrisons now arranges its wines by style rather than geography, under the descriptors "fresh," "smooth," "sweet" and "intense."

But wine is complicated. It takes time to learn the classic grape varieties, their range of flavors and the swathe of countries that produce them. If you're new to wine, Pinot Grigio may not be a bad place to start, as its fairly neutral character won't startle the palate, and it is a good jumping-off point for further exploration. As Mr. Jago says: "We are quick to decry brands and mainstream accessible flavors but actually, for most people, that is what they want."

From a Pinot Grigio, you can go on to explore a white wine such as a Fiano from Campania or a Falanghina. Ignore the snobs, start your own journey and don't worry too much about the technicalities.

—Email Will at william.lyons@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @Will_Lyons

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